Through the Office of Scholarly Publishing (OSP), a partnership between the IU Libraries and the Indiana University Press, readers everywhere have access to 30+ scholarly journals and scholarly publications free of charge. One of these journals is The Hoosier Science Teacher.

The Hoosier Science Teacheraims to “provide science educators in Pre-K-12 classrooms, informal education, home schools, and college classrooms with ideas and resources for teaching science…[and publish] content that may help support effective teaching of science and professional development for science educators.” First published in 1975 by The Hoosier Association of Science Teachers, Inc. (HASTI), The Hoosier Science Teacher published regularly in print until 2014. In 2017, publication of the Teacher resumed electronically. All of the journal’s content is immediately accessible, as open access is core to its mission. The journal’s Managing Editor, Matthew J. Benus, is an Assistant Professor of Science Education in the IU Northwest School of Education and a Think Tank & Strategic Consultant for Science & Learning.

Published biannually, the most recent volume of the journal Volume 40 Issue 1 (2018) contains 7 articles covering a variety of topics from lessons and demonstrations and instructional insight to curriculum and learning environments. One of the articles in the current issue is entitled “How Scientists are Portrayed in NSTA Recommends Books” and is authored by Kevin D. Finson and Cecile Arquette of Bradley University and Donna Farland-Smith of The Ohio State University. Finson, Arquette, and Smith argue that while “there was much consistency in how scientists were portrayed in the books across the three years…there were also issues with appropriate numbers of representations of minorities, women, and age of scientists.”

The authors focus on how depictions of scientists in school books affect children’s “perceptions of scientists,” as such perceptions impact students’ “understanding about where scientists work and what they do,” students’ attitudes towards science, as well as students’ success in science learning. While determining exactly how students develop their view of scientists is not easy, they find that media sources have the largest influence or impact. Stereotypes of scientists as older, white males in children’s literature has implications for children that do not identify with these portrayals. Such portrayals can affect students’ “formation of science identity,” which affects “one’s perception that he/she can be a successful investigator in science contexts and is viewed by others as being competent in science.”

Seeing as depictions of scientists in school books have major impacts on students’ interactions with and views of the field of science, tackling the issue of stereotypical depictions is a must. The authors suggest that one way to address this issue is through “the use of science trade books and picture books in instruction…[teacher-planned] student-centered activities that give [students] opportunities to explore their world and encourage them to think of themselves as scientists.”

The Hoosier Science Teacher’s commitment to open access and immediate availability makes it an immediately accessible and useful resource for teachers. According to Education Week Teacher, educators around the United States spend more than $1 billion dollars a year out-of-pocket on school supplies and resources for their students. This is particularly troubling for schools serving lower-income neighborhoods where, according to NPR, “teachers in high-poverty schools often find themselves digging even deeper into their own pockets.” Access to publications like The Hoosier Science Teacher may help educators to alleviate some of the out-of-pocket costs that they encounter when trying to access needed resources and literature on experimental approaches for their students and their teaching.

The IU Libraries is committed to diverse collections and perspectives, as the Libraries Diversity Strategic Plan notes that “diversity is… essential to the intellectual vitality of the university.” The Scholarly Communication department shares this commitment and aims to highlight IU’s diversity through our journal publishing program and through supporting publications like The Hoosier Science Teacher.

What kinds of publications are subject to the policy?

The policy only applies to scholarly journal articles authored by IU Bloomington faculty, published after February 21st, 2017.

I read that I can comply while completing my annual report. How can I do this?

Some faculty might not be able to publish in an OA journal. If that’s the case, you simply need to fill out your DMAI (annual report) as you would every year. We will check to see which version(s) you can create open access and then follow up with you to deposit that version. If you choose, you may opt out in the reporting system by selecting the opt out box for your article.

What will happen in the reporting system if I DO NOT opt out?

The Libraries will run a report in the reporting system that generates a dataset with citation information for articles subject to the open access policy. If a faculty member has not opted out, we will check the publisher’s self archiving policy. If the publishing agreement allows, we will deposit a PDF of the article in IUSW Open and send the faculty member a confirmation email. If the publishing agreement requires another version of the article or does not allow self archiving, we will be in touch by email with next steps.

What will happen in the reporting system if I DO opt out?

The Libraries will run a report in the reporting system that generates a dataset with citation information for articles subject to the open access policy. If a faculty member has opted out, we will generate a letter waiving the University’s license to the article. This article will be sent to the author by email.

What about my existing publishing agreements? How will I know if I need to opt out?

If you already know that you need to opt out for an article, you may do so while completing your annual report or using IUSW Open. Otherwise, we will do the rights checking for you and get in touch if you have an incompatible publishing agreement or if we cannot access your publishing agreement.

Do I need to manage all of my publishing contracts, waivers, and potential addenda myself?

Not by yourself. While we do recommend that faculty keep records of documents signed in the publishing process, the Libraries will keep track of the agreements we receive from faculty and publishers.

Can I apply a blanket opt out to all of my articles?

Blanket opt-outs are not possible. The BFC policy states that faculty must opt out for each article subject to the policy. If you wish to opt out for all of your articles, the easiest way to do so is to check the opt out box for the articles as you enter them in DMAI.

What if I make the wrong choice or need to opt out later?

The archival status of an article subject to the policy can be changed at any time and our systems accommodate this. Contact us at iusw@indiana.edu to make the change.

Who can I contact with questions?

You can contact us by email at iusw@indiana.edu or reach out to your liaison librarian. The openscholarship.indiana.edu website will connect you to open access guidance and instructions for depositing in IUSW Open. If you have further questions, the policy FAQ may also be helpful.

The IU Libraries support open scholarship for students, faculty, and staff across the Bloomington campus (and on other campuses as well). Read on to learn more about which services are available to you.

Undergraduate students

IUScholarWorks is available as a resource to undergraduate students who wish to share their research as long as they have authorization from their sponsoring department. Any faculty member in the department can provide authorization.

IU Open Journals support undergraduate student publications and students are encouraged to contact us if they are interested in starting a journal. Examples of student-managed IU Open Journals publications include:

Graduate Students

IUScholarWorks is available as a resource to graduate students who wish to share their research as long as they have authorization from their sponsoring department. Any faculty member in the department can provide authorization.

Graduate students who are writing theses and dissertations do not need authorization to deposit in IUScholarWorks. Some units require a copy of graduate student theses and dissertations to be made available in IUScholarWorks. To make your thesis or dissertation available, use this submission form.

IU Open Journals support graduate student publications and students are encouraged to contact us if they are interested in starting a journal. Examples of student-managed IU Open Journals publications include:

New Views on Gender – research and creative work (poetry, short stories, photography, artwork, etc.) that deals with issues of gender and sexuality

Research Data Services are available to graduate students at any level who need support planning, organizing, sharing, and publishing research data. For students applying for federal agency funding and required to provide a data management plan (DMP), a DMP review service is available.

Faculty

IUScholarWorks is available as a resource to faculty who wish to share their research. Examples of research output faculty share in IUScholarWorks include:

Submitted manuscripts (as sent to journals for peer-review)

Accepted versions (author’s final peer-reviewed drafts)

Published versions (publisher-created files)

Supplementary files, including streaming multimedia or datasets of any size

Gray literature (conference papers, working drafts, primary evidence)

Negative results or work that will not be finished

Our CV Service is available to faculty who would like all of the publications on their CV to be systematically deposited into the IUScholarWorks repository.

Coming soon, IUScholarWorks Open will be made available to all IU Bloomington faculty publishing work subject to the IU Bloomington Open Access Policy. For more information on the policy, visit our new Open Scholarship site.

Research Data Services are available to faculty who need support planning, organizing, sharing, and publishing research data. For faculty applying for federal agency funding and required to provide a data management plan (DMP), a DMP review service is available.

Staff

IUScholarWorks is available as a resource to staff who wish to share their research.

IU Open Journals support staff publications and staff members are encouraged to contact us if they are interested in starting a journal.

Research Data Services are available to staff who need support planning, organizing, sharing, and publishing research data. For staff applying for federal agency funding and required to provide a data management plan (DMP), a DMP review service is available.

If you produce large datasets, create video or images, develop software or custom virtual machines, or rely on large packages of files and data in your research, we are pleased to introduce you to a new wiki-based widget for transmitting your work to our repository team.

With true drag and drop functionality, the widget allows users to transmit files of almost any size, from a 500 MB .mp4 video to a 10+ GB bundled virtual machine. All material dropped on the window or uploaded by browsing to a file on your machine will be synced to a dedicated Box folder owned by the Scholarly Communications Department. From there, our staff can ensure your material is placed in the appropriate preservation environment and mapped correctly to one or more IUScholarWorks records.

The tool gives IU researchers an accessible and straightforward method for transmitting material for deposit. It will be useful for the deposit of big datasets as well as files that merely exceed the 25-50 MB limit imposed on email attachments. Even for those who prefer to self-submit their own datasets, the simplicity of the tool makes the process of pushing data files to the Scholarly Data Archiveless demanding. This is especially true if you are dealing with transmitting multiple small files. Compressing and/or packaging them as a zip or tar file will enable a smoother upload.

This is the tenth year Open Access Week has been celebrated. Each year, we celebrate a different piece of Open Access and its importance. For 2017, the emphasis was on “Open in Order to…” and the tangible benefits that scholars and institutions reap when research is openly available. The Open Access Week site lists several responses for the “Open in Order to…” prompt including “increase access to knowledge,” “facilitate collaboration,” and “raise your research visibility.”

At IU Libraries, we facilitated and promoted several programs that aligned with this year’s emphasis on the tangible results of OA. Staff from the Scholarly Communication Department, Teaching and Learning, Indiana University Press, the Institute for Digital Arts and Humanities (IDAH), and the Mathers Museum of World Cultures created and led these programs.

The “What Does Google Tell the World About You?” session focused on how openness can impact online presence and increase discoverability. Our workshop entitled “Predatory Publishers, Open Scholarship, and Your Research” provided an overview of predatory publishing practices and strategies for finding a reputable publisher. “How Does Scholarly Peer-Review for Publication Work? An Introduction for Journals and Books” gave participants a practical, behind-the-scenes look at scholarly peer-review for journals as well as books. Additionally, as an extension of OA week, an info-share and group consultation on the new Open Access Digital Monograph Publishing Program will happen this Tuesday, 10/31. The program supports the publication of open-access monographs in the humanities and humanistic social sciences with a $15,000 subvention.

Finally, Indiana University Press made five IU faculty-authored books published freely available on the IUScholarworks platform from October 20 through October 27. The titles included Dealing with Dictators by Lazlo Borhi, Folk Art and Aging by Jon Kay, Abidjan USA by Daniel Reed, The Accompaniment in “Unaccompanied” Bach by Stanley Ritchie, and Guide to the Solo Horn Repertoire by Richard Seraphinoff.

The Open Access Week Display Case In Wells Lobby, Featuring some of the IU Press books made openly available 10/20-10/27

The “opening up” of these titles coincided with the annual IU Press Authors Event, which celebrates IUB faculty that have published a monograph in the last year. Authors were congratulated by Dean Walters, Provost Robel, and Vice Provost Van Kooten.

A selection of the monographs published by IU faculty in the last year

Our focus for Open Access Week 2017 was to highlight the tangible, practical side of Open Access. Open Access increases impact, provides content to all, and is compatible with reputable and rigorous publishing. Our events this year dispelled common OA myths while highlighting these truths and emphasizing OA’s impact on the IU community specifically.

This post was written by the Scholarly Communication Department’s graduate assistant, Jenny Hoops.

This is our second post in a series that aims to highlight and showcase interesting, integral, and open scholarship at Indiana University. The Office of Scholarly Publishing (OSP), a partnership between the IU Libraries and Indiana University Press, continues to facilitate the creation and preservation of open and accessible scholarship through the Open Journal Systems (OJS) publishing platform. Through OJS, the OSP has helped numerous editorial teams publish over a dozen open access journal titles on a variety of subjects. One of the Office of Scholarly Publishing’s most widely-read titles, Journal of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (JoSoTL), demonstrates the impact that open access research can have.

The Journal of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (JoSoTL) has been dedicated to the publication of research examining contemporary problems, both practical and theoretical, in the teaching of higher education since its first publication in 2001. JoSoTL includes countless articles, essays, critiques, literature reviews, and case studies, authored by scholars around the globe. JoSoTL is indexed by several integral education databases including ERIC, Education Source, and Education Research Complete. All of JoSoTL’s journal content is immediately accessible, as open access is core to its mission. The journal’s editor-in-chief is Michael Morrone, lecturer in IU’s Kelley School of Business and director of the Faculty Colloquium on Excellence in Teaching (FACET).

One example of the quality of work that JoSoTL publishes is the article “Managing Student Self-Disclosure in Class Settings: Lessons from Feminist Pedagogy,” a piece from this year’s first issue of JoSoTL. The article is authored by IU South Bend’s Catherine Borshuk, a social psychologist and Director of the University’s Women’s and Gender Studies Program. Borshuk engages with a rising issue in higher education classrooms, particularly within the humanities and social sciences: the need to balance empathy with professionalism. The old feminist ideal “the personal is political” has entered the college classroom in unexpected ways, as students, encouraged by patterns developed from social media, feel more willing to share highly personal and occasionally upsetting anecdotes related (or sometimes not) to classroom lectures and topics. Borshuk argues that this impulse to share and create a more understanding classroom must be met with measured compassion, and attempts to foster empathy while still maintaining academic discipline and ethics are key.

After a review of the problem and its theoretical background, Borshuk offers potential solutions for this challenging task. She suggests several initial strategies for teachers engaging with her work: avoiding “othering” students by avoiding assumptions about student backgrounds and experiences and using the pronoun “we” rather than “they” or “them”; building diverse materials and subjects into class readings; and finally, focusing on societal and institutional narratives rather solely the personal (pgs. 80-82). Borshuk concludes with her own experiences of utilizing such techniques and encourages other educators to engage with feminist pedagogy to solve issues of student disclosure. Work such as this article provides philosophical explanations for educational issues while also beginning discussion on how to solve such problems to benefit both the teacher and the student.

The improvement of education relies on communication and collaboration between instructors. Further, in order to develop the best educational techniques, instructors must learn from mistakes and elaborate on successes. The Office of Scholarly Publishing is excited to assist JoSoTL in their work to improve both instruction and education.

Open Access Week 2017 is quickly approaching! This year, OA Week is October 23-27. We will publish more information about the IU Libraries 2017 Open Access Week events in a subsequent post, but I wanted to share all of the new and exciting resources we have created to prepare for OA Week now.

Open Access Week is a time to celebrate collaboratively working toward the shared goal of open and accessible research for all. The most important part of this shared vision is that when all work is open, we can build upon each other’s ideas, discoveries, and innovations. The first step in achieving this vision is simply sharing materials so that others can re-mix and re-use them.

In addition to a new Open Access guide, we’ve created a guide for detecting and avoiding predatory publishers and conferences. Publishers and conferences categorized as “predatory” are uninterested in sharing properly reviewed work or respecting the rights of authors; they are interested solely in profit and often ask authors to pay costly publishing or presenting fees. While some legitimate open access publications charge article processing charges (or APCs), predatory publishers are different. We will use this new guide in our OA week event on predatory publishers, but we hope that it will serve as an information source for graduate students long after the session. The guide walks students through how to evaluate a potential publisher or conference and also dispels some myths about the connection between predatory publishing and open access.

Flier Created by IU Libraries Advancement

The Scholarly Communication Department has also collaborated with the Reference Department to create an Open Access Week 2017 display in the Wells Library Lobby. The display will run from October 13 until Thanksgiving. The display was inspired by Open Access Week materials created and shared by OpenCon organizer Lorraine Chuen. Because Lorraine shared the posters under a Creative Commons license (CC BY 4.0), we were able to take her design and revise it to include Indiana University branding and information about IU Libraries events.

Layout by Leanne Nay, Digital Engagement Librarian

Finally, we are excited about our OA week event for undergraduate students, which is centered on how students can share their work openly and refine their online presence in order to secure employment after graduation. This event is the result of a partnership between the IU Libraries Teaching and Learning Department and the Scholarly Communication Department and is being promoted by the IU Career Development Center.

Learn more about Open Access at Indiana University by visiting https://openscholarship.indiana.edu/

During my time as co-chair, I spoke with dozens of faculty members, including department chairs and administrators, about the policy. In addition to touting the benefits of Open Access, such as more exposure and potential impact for the scholarship of faculty authors achieved by means of free access and long-term preservation, I routinely described the Open Access as ‘symbolic’ and ‘heuristic’.

By symbolic, I wanted to suggest that adoption of the policy would add the moral authority of another large public research university, such as Indiana University – Bloomington, to the list of U.S. colleges and universities who have adopted such policies.

By heuristic, I meant to express my view that the policy would – and now does – provide an impetus for faculty to think about how they might like to be able to reuse their work in other ways that could be professionally beneficial to them, besides simply transferring their copyright to a journal publisher in return for publication of their scholarly articles. Such uses could include freely distributing their publications through their own professional website, via social media, by means of an institutional or discipline-specific Open Access repository, or simply making them available to students in their classes. The IUB Open Access Policy fosters this goal by providing an institutional mechanism for retaining at least some of a faculty member’s copyrights in their scholarly work.

The policy is not a mandate. Faculty are not required to make their work Open Access. Under the policy, each IUB faculty member grants for themselves, at their discretion, the non-exclusive license articulated by the policy, which permits the university to make their scholarly “articles freely and widely available in an open access repository, provided that the articles are not sold, and appropriate attribution is given to authors.” Because authors can only license their work to the university in keeping with the Open Access policy if they retain enough of their rights to do so, the prior license granted in the policy provides leverage for a faculty member to use when negotiating publishing agreements with journal publishers. This is why Open Access policies, like IUB’s, which are modeled on Harvard University’s policy, are also often referred to as rights-retention policies.

While many publishers now have self-archiving policies that are consistent with the requirements of institutional and government-mandated Open Access polices (see http://www.sherpa.ac.uk/romeo/index.php), it might still be necessary to negotiate with publishers to achieve those ends. If you choose to negotiate your copyright with your publisher, the following suggested statement can be used to begin the discussion:

“Journal acknowledges that Author retains the right to provide a copy of the final manuscript, upon acceptance for Journal publication or thereafter, for compliance with the Indiana University Open Access Policy and for public archiving in IUScholarWorks as soon as possible after publication by Journal.”

This language can be added to amend a journal publishing agreement. Alternatively, IU provides a suitable form of addendum used in copyright negotiations at Big 10 Academic Alliance (formerly CIC) institutions. SPARC, the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition, also offers an author addendum with supporting documentation. Whether you use one of these addenda or not, the license to IUB will have force, unless you complete the opt out process. For information about opting out or obtaining a waiver letter, visit https://openscholarship.indiana.edu/.

A faculty author could have legitimate reasons to elect to opt out of the Open Access policy. One of the most prevalent reasons is the inclusion of third-party intellectual property quoted or included in a scholarly article under license from a copyright owner. Some common examples include an image or a musical excerpt. Licensing such content can be prohibitively expensive if the article is to be published in an Open Access repository. And while it is possible to deposit a faculty author’s final edited version of a scholarly article without any third-party content that exceeds fair use or is covered by a licensing agreement, an author might legitimately be concerned that the value of their article would be undermined by doing so. If an author cannot secure a license to make third-party intellectual property included in their work available with their article in an Open Access repository, they should opt out of the policy when reporting their work in their annual review on DMAI.

For help with author addenda or other intellectual property issues related to the IUB Open Access policy, please refer to the policy FAQ, or email nazapant@indiana.edu.

The Scholarly Communication Department attended several orientations and events for new faculty over the last few weeks. During these events, I have had the privilege of chatting informally with a faculty members about IU Bloomington’s new Open Access Policy. Faculty have a lot of questions about how the policy works, what kinds of scholarship the policy applies to, and author processing charges (or APCs).

The question that has been most difficult to explain quickly and effectively in these informal conversations has been about how faculty can “leverage” or utilize the license established by the Open Access policy when negotiating with potential publishers. This post will explain in more detail what “leveraging the license” means and clarify when in the publishing process faculty should attempt to negotiate. This post on leveraging the OA policy license is part one of a two-part series. The second post will explore the OA policy license in more detail, particularly when it concerns utilizing third-party content.

Our new Open Scholarship website includes a detailed FAQ that answers common questions faculty have about the OA policy. One of the questions listed is, “Will I have to negotiate my copyright transfer with my journal publishers?” Our answer is no. The policy maintains faculty agency and empowers them to make the best decision for their research. Faculty can always embargo their article to comply with their selected journal’s policies or opt out of the OA policy for a specific article.

However, we note that in many cases, it is in the faculty member’s best interest to negotiate. Moreover, the license that IUB OA Policy establishes can support faculty efforts to retain their copyright. Under the question about negotiating copyright transfers we state, “The policy operates automatically to give IUScholarWorks a license in any scholarly articles faculty members complete after its adoption… communicate this policy to your publisher and add to any copyright license (or assignment for scholarly articles) an addendum stating that the agreement is subject to this prior license. That way, you will avoid agreeing to give the publisher rights that are inconsistent with the prior license to IUScholarWorks that permits open-access distribution.”

What does this mean in practice? How do you begin to start a conversation with a publisher that has a restrictive publishing agreement? When should you mention the IUB OA Policy and subsequent license? We have created a flowchart to answer these questions:

Flowchart created by Jamie Wittenberg

After your manuscript is complete, you should identify a journal that offers the readership and audience that you are most interested in. If this is an open access journal, once your article is accepted and published you have complied with the OA policy! If this is a closed journal, you will need to determine if your publishing agreement allows self-archiving (or posting an open version of your article in a repository). The Scholarly Communication department is always happy to help faculty review their publishing agreements. If the publishing agreement allows you to share a version of your work, preferably the publisher’s final version (after peer review with typesetting), then you will submit that version to the institutional repository. Archiving the author’s final manuscript will nevertheless meet the OA policy’s requirement. If the journal does not allow self-archiving, it’s time to consider negotiating.

Negotiating with a publisher is both personal and contextual. Your decision to negotiate may be impacted by your level of comfort, goals, co-authors, and the importance of the publication venue. Is this the only venue that makes sense for your article? Does this journal have impressive metrics or important readership? Or are there other publication venues that might accept the article? Is it non-negotiable to you that others have access to your article, regardless of library affiliation or socio-economic status? Asking these questions can help you decide if publisher negotiation is in your best interest. In general, many publishers are familiar with open access policies so starting a conversation about the publishing agreement is not harmful and can help clarify how or if you should continue to negotiate.

After you have reviewed the publishing agreement and you’ve decided that you would like to negotiate, you can contact our Copyright Program Librarian and lawyer, Naz Pantaloni, for guidance. In addition to having expertise in copyright, Naz has worked with several scholars to retain their author rights and is familiar with strategies for negotiating with publishers. Naz will either assist you with preparing an addendum to present to the journal or help you construct a response that includes information about the IUB Open Access policy. One addendum template that Naz might help you utilize comes from the Big 10 Academic Alliance (formerly CIC). An example of a response to a publisher in order to start the negotiation process is found on our Open Scholarship Q&A:

“[Journal] acknowledges that [Author] retains the right to provide a copy of the final manuscript, upon acceptance for [Journal] publication or thereafter, for compliance with the Indiana University Open Access Policy and for public archiving in IUScholarWorks as soon as possible after publication by [Journal].”

If you cannot come to an understanding with your publisher and need to sign over the exclusive rights to your work, you must complete the opt out process.

In a previous post, I wrote about the spectrum of openness that exists and the Scholarly Communication Department’s goal of supporting all manifestations of open. It is worth stating that the IUB Open Access policy is about making content open and available to readers everywhere. But it is also true the OA policy is about author rights. When authors retain their rights, including the right to reproduce, distribute, display, and make derivative works of their scholarship, they retain the life of their work. I have consulted with many faculty members (and graduate students) that need to interlibrary loan their own work because they don’t have access to it. I’ve worked with numerous faculty that wish they would have retained at least some of their rights so that they could make their work available to their students or share it more broadly. In addition to resources like our copyright program and publishing resources, the OA policy provides a mechanism for faculty to find their seat at the negotiation table. I’m excited for what this means for the research profile of IU Bloomington.

This post was written by the Scholarly Communication Department summer graduate assistant, Ruthann E. Miller

This post is the first in a series that aims to highlight and showcase interesting, integral, and open scholarship in the IUScholarWorks repository. IUScholarWorks currently contains more than 8,000 unique items submitted by scholars, students, and professionals from a variety of disciplines. With all of this content, what interests readers the most?

The repository offers a section on statistics that conveniently provide the top 10 most viewed items. These results have a surprising nugget nestled away in the number 5 spot. It is a dissertation entitled, A Performer’s Guide to the Saxophone Music of Bernhard Heiden. The dissertation was written in 1999 by Thomas Walsh and later deposited into the repository in 2006. The dissertation is shared under a Creative Commons license, which is not uncommon for items authored by scholars from the Jacobs School of Music. A Creative Commons license (CC) comes in different varieties, but they all allow the author of a work to decide to allow others to freely distribute, share, and build upon their material while still retaining ownership. This particular dissertation is licensed under a CC BY-NC-ND 2.5, which means the author allows anyone to copy and redistribute the work in any medium or format. However, the author does not allow the dissertation to be used for commercial purposes and it is not permissible to alter the work. The dissertation earned the fifth position with 7,644 views. To put this into perspective, number four on the list has 8,372 and number six has 6,714.

This particular item is important for a number of reasons. First, it is a dissertation. Dissertations are arguably one of the most important steps in a scholar’s early career. They also tend to fill gaps in the literature and explore foundational disciplinary concepts or trends in greater detail. This particular dissertation is incredibly popular, as denoted by its place in the top five. Of the top five items, one is an article on why the drinking age should be lowered, two are technical reports from IU’s scientific community, and one is a journal article on education. There are no other dissertations in the top five items. Not only did a dissertation crack the top five, but it is also the only one in the top ten!

The focus Thomas Walsh applies to the work of Bernard Heiden is fascinating. Walsh spends time providing a biographical sketch of Heiden as well as historical background on Heiden’s pieces that include saxophone. Much of the personal information included in the dissertation was obtained from several interviews Walsh conducted with Heiden. His final interview was in May 1999 and, unfortunately, Heiden passed away in April 2000. Heiden had a close connection with the Jacobs School of Music and was the chair of the composition department until retiring in 1974.

A Performer’s Guide to the Saxophone Music of Bernhard Heiden by Thomas Walsh also showcases the importance of making research open access. As most graduate students in the humanities can confirm, it is notoriously difficult to access dissertations, especially older ones or works connected to universities that have not promoted open access to their graduate students and faculty. Due to this, there is often information that does not find its way into new research simply due to information barriers. IU’s repository, however, provides access to a broad range of items that were formerly out of reach, including dissertations. Now, the research and efforts of newly minted scholars can be attained and used to the fullest potential. By making materials openly available, IUScholarWorks facilitates the use of the information contained within dissertations to reach new audiences and promote the spread of ideas.This dissertation is just one example of how much impact open access can have on the world of academia.